Patrick Hennebelle is a Directeur de Recherche at the Department of Astrophysics at CEA. His research focuses primarily on the process of star formation and the dynamics of the interstellar medium, spanning scales from large galactic structures down to planet-forming disks and even star themselves. He investigates these phenomena using both large-scale numerical simulations on massively parallel supercomputers and simplified analytical models. The simulation results are then compared with observational data, often through the generation of synthetic observations. He devotes particular attention to understanding the physical mechanisms driving star formation, including gravitational collapse, angular momentum transport via magnetic braking, turbulence, cooling, and radiative processes. His work also extends to the study of interstellar dust grain evolution—key ingredients in the formation of planets.
Patrick Hennebelle earned his degree from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Paris-Sorbonne University. He received his PhD in 2000 from Paris Observatory and the École Normale Supérieure. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at Cardiff University (UK) and at the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES). In 2004, he was appointed as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, and in 2012, he joined the Department of Astrophysics at CEA. That same year, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant, followed by an ERC Synergy Grant in 2017.
![Figure 1 - The figure illustrates the diversity and multi-scale nature of the structures in the Galaxy. The first two lines are real astronomical images, which go from the galactic disk itself and down to the planet-forming disks. The last two lines are generated from numerical simulations and aim to understand and interpret the observations. [adapted from Facchini et al. 2025, Göller et al. 2025, Hennebelle et al. 2022, Lebreuilly et al. 2024, Molinari et al. 2016, 2025, Reissl et al. 2016]](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/figure.png)
